Update: Bahama Breeze Quilt - Block Z

It's Week 2 of my 'staycation'; the first 13 Y Blocks are finished and I've completed the first 12 Z blocks for my Bahama Breeze quilt. It's half-time!

Block Z is a 9-patch block with 4 of the smaller blocks made of paper-pieced triangle units and 4 corner pieces made of half-square triangles.

To make the corner units, I'm using a method I remember from one of the sewing programs - most likely Fons & Porter's Love of Quilting show, since the seam marking tool I have in my stash has their name on it.

I matched one blue with one cream square, right sides together. The seam marking tool is placed diagonally from corner to corner and two seams are marked using a chalk wheel.

Each seam is sewn, forming two triangle units. A quick cut with the rotary cutter between the two seams gives me two perfect squares.

While cutting the patches for the paper-pieced triangle units of the Y blocks, I used a paper pattern tracing of the foundation sections, a straight ruler and rotary cutter. I couldn't help thinking there must be a better way to cut the pieces accurately with less wasted fabric. As I assembled each unit, I needed to trim frequently, which really slowed me down. So on my next trip to JoAnn Fabrics I checked out the quilting notions and found these Wonder Triangles.

I used them as guides to cut the fabric pieces for these Z blocks paper-pieced units and they worked perfectly as cutting guides. The cut pieces are very accurate in size, so very little trimming is required while sewing each unit. It takes a little extra care to line up the pieces precisely, but the results are worth it, and I think the work goes much faster.

I'll be starting on the next 12 Y blocks - the "third quarter" - this week. The fabric pieces are already cut and prepped for sewing.

I've been thinking about how I want to quilt this project, either as one big quilt top, in sections or one block at a time. The quilting pattern suggested in the project instructions is quite simple and would be well-suited for quilting a block at a time or a row of blocks. Either way, I still need to choose backing fabric.

You can see all of my photos for this project in my Bahama Breeze Quilt photo album

edited:
Dec-18-2018 Replaced SewAmazin Flickr photos with Google photos; edit links